Every night I dream of India

Sunday Blog 159 - 17th November 2024

It's been a bumpy, busy old two weeks since I returned from India. And almost every one of those 14 nights, I've dreamed of India. Unusually active dreams with colours, sounds, sights of India. And lots of animals. Because I've been dreaming of India, does that mean I've been celebrating, not appropriating Indian culture?

While in India, I often thought of Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert. Back in the 1960s when Richard or Ram Dass had tired of using LSD to enlarge his mind, he travelled to India. He wanted mind expansion that didn't finish when the trip wore off. He was one of the people responsible for bringing yoga to the west. I feel very grateful to him for his part in this.

Then he turned his attention to end of life care. He supported people at the end of their life (as essentially death doula, although that phrase wasn't used then) and he educated others to do so. Elizabeth Kubler Ross was one of his students.

I've been re-reading his last memoir, Being Ram Dass, finished just before his death at 88 where he "escaped the confines of his increasingly painful frame." Since returning from India, I've had a two-night work trip to Sydney and saw a post about a friend's ex, letting us know he was in his last hours or days. He has been confined to an aged care facility for the last decade, decimated by early onset dementia. Just the day before I'd seen someone walking the streets of Sydney, just out of the corner of my eye. I knew it couldn't be John, but it looked like John. Bustling along with a vigorous stride, how he was when I knew him twenty years ago.

While in Sydney I also met up with an old friend who also lost his mother this year and we swapped tales of our new orphan status. How lucky we were to be nearly 60, but we lamented the knock-down, drag out fight death can be. How it was for our parents. How it was for John. How we want something different for ourselves.

Tonight I walked around the block, savouring the sounds and smells of my suburban home paradise. Saw a plane in the sky and was grateful I wasn't on it.